


Lotus-eater

by momosansovino



Series: Normality Is A Paved Road [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Crossover Pairings, Daydreaming, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momosansovino/pseuds/momosansovino
Summary: Q falls asleep while waiting for the kettle to boil. He dreams of Merlin and their past.





	Lotus-eater

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [食莲花的人（Lotus-eater）](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032155) by [momosansovino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/momosansovino/pseuds/momosansovino). 



 

***

Q reaches for his mug, drinks but only to find the mug empty. 

It’s ten past four in the afternoon. The Q Branch is almost tranquil. Since Gareth Mallory announces the new conciliation policy, allowing half of the officers to enjoy summer exclusive _Happy Friday_ , Friday afternoons usually suffer from insufficient staffing. Needless to say the remaining half isn’t motivated by the prospect that they have to stay put.

The MI6 Quartermaster takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. 

 

He sits on the staff lounge sofa, waiting for the water to boil. The air-conditioning at Q Branch is always lower than the rest of the building. He has to wear a thin layer of cardigan outside the shirt. Not that he complains about it. His _metal pets_ only function well on high speed in temperature lower than ideal, especially those huge ones with a bunch of tubes wired onto them. And Q, the conductor, moves freely among them like a little four-blade-windmill singing to the wind. 

At late summer nights, around eight or nine, when he climbs out of MI6’s monstrous shadow, the outdoor air always smells alien to him. His heart aches from the sudden increase in pressure. The reminiscent of day time heat is suffocating. Q breathes hard, head still dizzy for he's been looking at computer screens for way too long. 

 

He has calculated it before. It takes one minute and thirty-five seconds for cold water to reach boiling point.

The teapot bubbles. _One minute and thirty-five seconds_. He thinks and lies down on the sofa.

 

 

***

It takes him two minutes to walk from The Secret Service building to the tube, and then three more stops to get home. If excluding the waiting time, it’s a total of seven minutes. That is, the time to make a soft boiled egg. 

Q coughs. The tube ventilation is terrible. The smell of rustic metal and moldy perspiration attacks his nostril. Voices echos in the limited space like bats beating his head with their wings. Q waves his hand, as if dusting off invisible flies. 

The sight is so very _familiar_. 

Sea breeze caresses his tousled curly hair. Hammock swings slightly in the hot air. The setting sun is like a stalk of blooming calendula. Between two tall palm trees, the man in the hammock has slender legs. 

Q approaches him unsteadily.

“I bet the sun will set in 3 minutes.” He says.

The man doesn’t get up. He lowers his eyes to the tip of the man’s beautiful lateral malleolus.

 

His eyes snap open. He is still thinking about that unique stalk of calendula. It’s golden and melting like butter sizzling on hot pan. The sound of water bubbling echos in the air. 

When Q looks up, he suddenly sees the reflection of himself in the dusty window. 

 

It’s _Merlin_.

He is so familiar with the shape of that particular pair of legs. He even looks it up in that long list of acupuncture chart. The sunken spot right below the lateral malleolus is called shenmai. In cold winter days, when Merlin naps on the the sofa with electric blanket underneath his legs, Q kneels down on the carpet, his slender fingers traces the firming muscle of Merlin’s leg, going slowly down and down, like a ship looking for its harbor. It circles around the reef and then finally settles down in shallow water. 

But those are all things in the past. Past before he becomes the head of the Research & Development division of The Secret Service; before he hands his real name over and takes up the code name “Q”. If he can go back, Q thinks, he doesn’t objects the idea at all. But much to his dismay, since their separation, he never ever sees Merlin, never ever dreams about him… except in the past thirty seconds, or twenty seconds, when he recognizes the crest of Merlin's ankle bone. The bone beneath the skin like lotus leaf, not yet unfurled, scarcely appears.

Q asks himself, does he remember Merlin’s face? The answer is equally ambiguous. If Gareth Mallory instructs him to draw a wanted portrait of Merlin. He probably won’t be able to do it. Which is a shame. But who knows? He can draw a circle on paper and describe those hazelnut green eyes, how they always glitter when Merlin talks. He can describe the half-frame glasses sitting on that high-bridged nose. Or those firm lips, and how they part and form a smile. He remembers those lips clearly. The warmth. The texture. He can describe the winkles around those gentle eyes, the freckles on the skin, even the shape of the earlobe. But how everything supposedly come together on a single sheet of paper, he has no clue. 

 

When he walks out of the tub, the sun has long set. The sky is cornflower blue, only two shades darker. Warm lights in the residences float in the void like countless eyes of trapped beasts.

If he hasn’t met that handsome bald man in a technology conference, Q's life probably wouldn't make a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Now he casually tails behind the bald man, thinking if he should, at the next crossing, or the crossing after the next, catching up and promoting his self-developed gadgets. If the money is reasonable, he will sell _everything_ he’s ever invented to the man, every single piece of under-appreciated devices. Or he can sell _himself_ , if the man is not interested in his gadgets. The bald man wears black trench coat and lights a cigarette immediately when he is out of the underground, as if to dispatch the trepidation. Q bites his lips, eyes glue to the man’s finger which are now swaying unintentionally as the tip of the cigarette flickers. Maybe he can ask for a lighter, Q considers, may he is just really _really_ desperate for a good pick-up line. 

“Why are you trailing behind again, Q?” The man turns and asks in a manner that strikes familiarity. 

Running into strangers who you’ve only encountered in dreams, _or_ dreaming about the love of your life and waking up into the realization that such person does not exist. 

Q believes it is the latter. 

“Are you afraid of me?” The bald stranger asks. He stops and waits for Q to catch up. In the dim street light, the dusk falls like thousands of delicate snowflakes. 

 

He suddenly recalls the discord between them a while back durning dinner. He and Merlin quarrels frequently to a point where Merlin gets use to not even keeping track of the cause and resolution, as if you love someone truly and madly, the why and how matter so little. They sit face to face by the window in this Italian restaurant, taking pleasuring from observing pedestrians, speculating their jobs, their interest, and their lifestyles. One hand cupping his cheek, Q places his other hand on the table. Merlin talks and his fingers massaging gently on the back of Q’s hand. While they eat, Merlin has to go out and take a long phone call. Q watches his back and slowly smoothens the napkin using table knife. 

_ Who’s calling? _

_ Someone from work. _

_ What work? _

Merlin pats him on the shoulder, coaxing him as if he’s still a little kid. 

_ Work that earns money so that I can take you out for dinner.  _

Q looks up immediately and shoots daggers at him. The conversation somehow hurts his pride.His mood swings on tiptoe every time Merlin’s attention shifts - lack of attention agitates him, however if Merlin looks him in the eye and whispers passionate sweet nothings, he gets flustered and doesn’t know where to put his hands. He can quickly extract crucial information from six monitor screens at the same time, but he never seems to be able to  differentiate jokes from the love talk. 

“Thank you so very much. But you know I survive well without you.” He says, bitterly. “As a matter of fact, I earn as much as you.”

“That’s far off the point.”

“That’s exactly on point.”

“I take you out not because I think you are in need of relief. I take you out, because I want to… because, because this is what normal people do, Q, because I…”

“Merlin.” Q face reddens. He is shaking visibly now. “ _Please._ ”

Merlin puts down his fork. “Do you know what I just wrote on the back of your hand, Q?”

 

“You are afraid of me.” The stranger says. 

Q is at a loss. He doesn’t know how to answer that. He does not deny that he is completely overwhelmed by the unfathomable knowledge that the stranger brought to grace the tech conference. A _light_ he has never seen on anyone else. If Q can speak magniloquent, he will shamelessly say that meeting Merlin is like looking into the mirror and sees himself in twenty years. Or more accurately, a man he wants to become in twenty years. 

How could he not reverence such light? How could he not being drawn to the light like a moth darts into the flame?

“I will do anything.”

_ Anything to close the distance between us. _

“Do what exactly? Tell me, what makes love dauntingly beautiful?”

I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I don’t know.

“Because you don’t own love. It owns you.”

The stranger has a pair of hazelnut green eyes. 

 

Q finds himself writing.

_ To Whom It May Concern, _

_ I miss you dearly. It weighs heavier and heavier as each day and night passes. I can feel it crushing down on my body and stripping all my senses and reasons away. I try to bury myself in work to ease my thoughts. But now I finally realize that it’s no use. Now you know how desperate I am. How foolish. How utterly childish my actions are, running away from you. You must not laugh for I am now seating here, conscientiously, writing this letter. Do you remember the GYM right next to my old apartment? There’s a swimming pool in there. One day I asked you on a swim date. You said yes and then showed up in diving suit. You can’t swim, idiot.  _

 

He types and then stops, staring into the void. He loses the entire paragraph after a cut and paste goes wrong. 

 

The bathroom steams like the vast enshrouding mist in his dream. 

Q presses his hands on the glass. The shower head is still on, and the water spills all over his hips. But the part that Merlin places inside him feels hotter than any boiling water. The glass partition shakes sweetly, shedding strings of teardrops. Q can’t help moaning. Merlin turns off the shower, his cheek brushes past Q’s shoulder, and then he covers Q’s hand with his own.

 

When Merlin grips his waists and palms his shoulder blades while fucking him hard and steady, he suddenly realizes the ridiculousness of _everything_. They’ve never had sex in the shower room of that GYM. There are so many things they have not done before they separate.

At the split of second, the sheer happiness he experiences is too surreal to believe to be true. He has to doubt it, like he is compelled to try to analyze every heartfelt confession Merlin has ever said. 

Gradually realizing that he is actually dreaming is difficult. It’s like running for life down a tunnel, completely out of breath, and as the light at tunnel end looms into shapes, he recognizes the familiar outline of MI6’s staff lounge, and hears the kettle water boiling. His heart suddenly sinks.

_ What an idiot! _ How could he wake up in a world without Merlin!

Absent-mindedly, he can still feel Merlin holding him, sweet lips gently wetting his earlobe. His cock hard and flushed. Q can feel the length penetrating him, and his own muscle spasming around it. He whimpers, choking back the tears. 

Half of his brain refuses anything unreal and illogical, however half of the other madly tries memorize everything, every words ever spoken, every passionate moments ever sprung, every piece of sound ever echoed in that tiny shower room. 

 

“Open the shower.” He voice a thousand pieces under the thrust.

“Too much noise.” Merlin murmurs. He doesn’t slow down. “Only want to listen to _yours_.”

Q doesn’t hesitate anymore. He forces himself to turn, gathering his scattered thoughts and shoving them right back into the tunnel, into the darkness. He doesn’t know where he will end up being, but he doesn’t care anymore. He wants to go back to that nonexistent shower room, back to Merlin’s arm. 

 

Bits of 0 and 1 falls like dust.

Computer whisper like humming insects; keyboards warm. Q carefully reaches out, only to find it covered with fine dust. It is as if he is touching the stranger’s cheek in that tech conference. Q removes the man’s glasses, and plays with it in his hands, before folding it on the table. 

“Do you realize that we wear similar glasses?”

The man smiles, hazelnut green eyes curl into a laugh. “Are you implying something?”

Q traces the man’s mouth, those firm lips parted naturally, following his touch. He pinches the man’s high-bridged nose like a little kid playing with a scoop of clay. He then moves on, smoothens the wrinkles around the bald man’s eyes.

“Didn’t we go together that day? I asked you then, if you wanted a wig to go with the outfit, so we could look even more alike.” He pauses. “I thought you got mad at my joke.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you refused.”

“What did I say?”

“You said no. Q is Q. Unique and irreplaceable.”

 

_ To Whom It May Concern, _

_ The impossible love I wish I could have it all.  _

_ Everything I presume I could have after oceans of time, is no longer mine. _

_ Everything we couldn’t have but forcibly try to possess, almost kills us both.  _

 

The young man wants to be the best in everything he does. He wants to win any game, any logic in any argument, and even if the world goes up in flames around him, he will still need to win the final battle. 

He walks so fast as if wind carries him, with both hands in his pockets, not minding that his glasses keeps sliding down his nose. Merlins strolls idly across the grass behind him like a grey pigeon following an over energetic squirrel, tucking his wings tightly against his body.  After all, Q was still born seventeen years late than him. 

They fight. Break up. Get back together. Then fight again. Then break up. Then get back together back. Words like lumps in the throat, suffocates them both.

“I shall die before you.” He declares solemnly, gloating smugly as if he has just cast the most effective spell.

Merlin frowns and stops typing.

So Q continues. “I will become someone greater than you, and I will make you beg- ”

“Beg you for what?” Merlin interrupts him. 

Q blinks. He actually hasn’t thought about that fat yet. He just wants the words to hurt, to hurt Merlin, to hurt him like nails digging into the flesh and draws blood. Because after all, he’s the one running frenetically chasing the _sun_. And in the end, he has to build an wall so high that is colder than ice to protect himself from burning into ashes. 

“Are you a coward or you just think I’m not worth fighting?” He knows by heart Merlin aren’t both. 

Merlin adjusts his glasses and shifts his gaze back to the screen. After half a minute he suddenly outbursts. “What the _fuck_ are you talking about? I wouldn’t allow you to die before me!”

 

_ To Whom It May Concern, _

_ At what point in time do you realize that it is simply impossible for us to leave each other? _

_ I was so afraid at that time, because I don’t want you to stop yourself and wait for me. You know, I will catch up. I’ve made up my mind long ago. Don’t you believe me? You wouldn’t think I’m one of those inferiors, wouldn’t you? My dearest, maybe I’m not as determined as I thought I would be. Deleting all your contacts must be one of the worst decisions in my life. But I was only thinking… I think maybe this way I can have a way out. I couldn't possibly have a way out, couldn't I? Is this the reason why you are punishing me right now? Shielding all your information from me. Otherwise I’d be able to find your address and send you this letter, wouldn’t I?  _

_ I want to talk to you about the Lotus-eater.  _

_ In Odysseus, sailors eat the toxic food that comes from a flower and forget about where they come from. They forget about the purpose of their journey and don’t want to go back home.  _

_ “Is there any peace  _

_ In ever climbing up the climbing wave?”  _

 

Merlin puts down his fork. “Do you know what I just wrote on the back of your hand, Q?”

The young man stops short. He stammers and starts picking at the food. “I know.”

“What did I write?”

Q doesn’t answer. He smiles, and spears the farfalle with his fork. 

 

_ To Whom It May Concern, _

_ Forgetting fails to bring me the peace I want. The pain of losing you leaves my life incomplete. _

_ I used to be a Lotus-eater, but not anymore.  _

 

Sometime in the past, the shuttered mug never comes together again. 

Before he leaves, Merlin wraps him in his arm so tight that Q has to be the one comforting him. It’s alright. _It’s alright_. Merlin you’ve seen enough right? How could you still cry like a baby? Q tiptoes, the line of his jaw rubs against Merlin’s left shoulder. Merlin squeezes him desperately. Q couldn’t tell where the pain is coming from. Maybe Merlin is on the edge of breaking his shoulder bone. Maybe it’s just his heart hurting badly. Q shifts and buries his cheek in Merlin’s wool sweater. The elder man smells reassuring like the pleasant scent of oak trees. Q kneels in the soil and thus all pain forgotten. 

It will be alright. _It will be alright_ , Merlin. We will be alright. 

He will never chase another sun. Tears of the candle gutter dripping down like ropes binding his wing. 

 

 

***

Little by little, Q realizes that he is still lying on MI6’s staff lounge. He doesn’t wake up in one minute and thirty-five seconds. On the counter, white smoke rises slowly from the kettle. 

The clock on the wall indicates that five minutes have passed, but Q has felt as if it's  been over a _lifetime_. 

 

He stares blankly into the void. Those hazelnut green eyes, like the evergreen leaves of an oak tree.

In the following few days, the ghost of Merlin’s touch follows him, caressing him; his scent lingering by his side. And that _face_ , Merlin’s face, so sharpe and unforgettable, as if the man hasn’t aged since they fist met.


End file.
